"The operating system is relatively small, and programs require less space [than with DECUS 8-102a] since a distinction is made between program and data. This is less flexible and leads to irreconciliable differences between LISP 1.5 and LISP-8, but it is more efficient for a small computer such as a PDP-8."

"Modified version of DECUS NO. 8-102A for use under OS/8 (PS/8). OS/8 file input and output is allowed, which enables the user to prepare LISP programs using OS/8 EDIT. Input and output in ASCII. Facilities for writing own code in assembler to be added to the interpreter for evaluation of special functions are provided for."

Modified by Davis on January 28, 1972 and March 9, 1972; modified by Torbjorn Alm, Autocode AB, on May 15, 1973; submitted to DECUS by Robert Hassinger,
Liberty Mutual Research Center, Hopkinton, MA.

Mats Nordström and his colleagues at the University of Uppsala in Sweden developed a series of Lisp implementations written in Fortran.

"LISP 1.5 INTERPRETER WRITTEN IN FORTRAN
A simple Lisp 1.5 interpreter has been written in Fortran by Mats Nordstrom at Uppsala University. The system follows closely the definition of eval given in the Lisp 1.5 User' Manual; in particular, it uses an A-list (rather than a linear stack for variable bindings). Some 'modern' features have been included, such as nospread lambdas and implicit progns.
The interpreter is oriented toward interactive use, but with minor modifications it can be used in batch mode. It is intended for those who want to implement Lisp quickly and provisionally for a new computer, and for tutorial purposes in teaching interpreters and Lisp implementation. The program is carefully commented and documented. Educational and research institutions can obtain a copy free of charge by writing to the following address: Mats Nordstrom, Datalogilaboratoriet, Sysslomansgaten 25, S-752 23, Uppsala, Sweden." [SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 6, Number 5, July 4, 1971, page 6 (News section) ACM DL]

The original motivation was to be able to run Lisp programs on computers elsewhere in Sweden via a remote processing capability; the portability allowed these systems to be ported to various computers at Uppsala and elsewhere. Lisp F1 was compatible with Lisp 1.5 with extensions from BBN Lisp; it was written in Fortran IV and ran on IBM computers. Its development began in January 1970, and it was usable by September 1970; subsequent work increased its performance. Lisp F3 was compatible with INTERLISP, and thus could run many INTERLISP packages such as EDIT, MAKEFILE, BREAK, ADVISE and TRACE. Its development began in 1976. For more detail, see chapter 4 of Herbert Stoyan's book[Online at informatik.uni-erlangen.de via archive.org].

Nordström produced a final version, Lisp F4, in the early 1980s; see below.

Source code

Nordström supplied to McBride what is believed to be the final snapshot of Lisp F4, from August 22, 1983, with permission to distribute it. McBride includes Nordström's original code absolutely complete and untouched including documentation, Fortran source code, lisp code, etc. -- see the file lispf4.orig in the archive.

Edinburgh Computer Science Department Lisp, or ECSD LISP, was implemented by N. H. Shelness. It was written in the IMP programming language and ran on the EMAS operating system. The Wikipedia IMP article contains links to a variety of information about IMP, including compilers targetted at modern platforms.

"CLisp (which was short for COINS Lisp, COINS being the department acronym at the time) didn't have any relation to the C Language (it was a Lisp-1 written in native VAX/VMS Macro-32 assembler and was the first Lisp written for the VAX architecture, predating VaxLisp). It also had no relation to the current CLISP (ANSI Common Lisp), which came later. CLisp faded quickly into obscurity when Lisp in our department moved heavily and early to TI Explorers and CLTL1.

BTW, when we decided we had to develop COINS Lisp ... for VAX/VMS (UMass Amherst had one of the earliest VAX/780 machines delivered--I think it was unit #4 or 5), we needed to move Lisp applications to the new VAX from ALISP ...

Anyway, when the VAX arrived, we looked initially at LISP F3 (FORTRAN-based Interlisp dialect) to see if it could be made feasible, but performance and capability were just not there. The VAX architecture was enough different to make porting PDP dialects difficult. COINS Lisp started from an skeletal representation/evaluator base that George Carrette had written at MIT. COINS Lisp took advantage of the CISC instructions and data representations provided by the VAX architecture (e.g., array representations and indexing instructions, native string representations and instructions, etc.), and it ran very efficiently for that era. The initial DVMT (Distributed Vehicle Monitoring Testbed), a pioneering multi-agent environment was written in COINS Lisp. (GRASPER was also migrated from ALISP to COINS Lisp: fortunately no longer requiring the AVL-tree "graph paging" with the larger virtual-memory on the VAX.)" [Dan Corkill, personal communication, September 3, 2010]

"The code that George provided (very graciously, after a brief conversation with him at MIT) was in the Spring of 1978. (I wish I'd kept better notes and, more importantly the code from those days. The CS Department maintained archival backups for a very long time (over 20 years), but then stopped maintaining them. As I recall, George's code consisted of a basic interpreter, BBOP and low-bit fixnum type tagging, Lisp-1 dynamic binding, and a stop & copy GC (no compiler, as I recall). All this was written entirely in MACRO32 assembly language. It might have been a very early prototype [of VAX NIL], but I'm wondering if it was more of a experimentation vehicle for VMS & MACRO32? (Could it have been a hand translation of some other Lisp interpreter or an environment for playing with some of the Lisp implementation techniques of the era?) In any event, George's generosity of sharing the basic interpreter was what I needed to get buy-in in the Department to build our own system rather than waiting for someone else to do a high-performance Lisp for the VAX. It didn't take long after we had COINS Lisp ready (with its compiler) to entice users of ALISP to port their code over to COINS Lisp." [Dan Corkill, personal communication, September 10, 2012]

"LispKit is the portable implementation technique for a purely functional programming language, LispKit Lisp. The implementation consists of a small virtual machine, and a corpus of language support software, itself written in LispKit Lisp. It is the size and simplicity of the virtual machine which gives the implementation its portability.

The language is a dialect of the Lisp language and shares two of the most powerful features of that language: the universal structured type, the list; and s-expression syntax which is both expressive and easily manipulated by program. It differs from full Lisp in that all LispKit programs must be written in a functional style, since there are no language primitives for updating data structures. The absence of destructive assignment greatly improves the intelligibility of programs, and is held to improve programmer productivity, by simplifying the creation and maintenance of correct programs.

...

Generally speaking, sub­expressions are evaluated only if their values become necessary in the evaluation of a larger expression. This means that infinite values - for example the list of all the numbers, or of all the digits in the decimal expansion of an irrational number - may be handled in a natural way."

[Henderson et al. 1983]

Documentation and source

"The principal text both on the LispKit implementation, and on the LispKit Lisp dialect, and a useful introduction to this manual, is
Functional Programming: Application and Implementation ...
. It describes a virtual machine and a language slightly different from those described in this manual, but familiarity with the system described in the book will help in an understanding of the current system, especially so if it is intended to make any changes to the virtual machine or to the system support software." [Henderson et al. 1983]

PicoLisp is a minimalist Lisp (dynamic binding, interpreted, three datatypes: atoms, symbols, and lists) with a rich library (including persistent objects, Prolog-like declarative language, and template-based abstract GUI) supporting its use as a general application server. It was created by Alexander Burger starting in the late 1980s; Jon Kleiser contributed the OpenGL library.